Testing ... Testing ... Scientists (military and otherwise) have been pretty interested in testing the effects of marijuana throughout the decades, and states are entering a whole new kind of marijuana experiment. Legalization will certainly go down in the history books as a watershed moment in our culture's love/hate relationship with the demon weed ... er, cannabis.
In this gallery, we explore other surprising and historical marijuana moments in America (not chronological).

Photo: Ralph Crane, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Testing ... Testing ... Scientists (military and otherwise) have...

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First, a tip of the hat to the big, surprising, mega-marijuana event in Seattle (the world): Hempfest.
Pictured: Rainy Collins holds up a sign during Seattle's Hempfest pro marijuana gathering at Myrtle Edwards Park on the Seattle waterfront on Friday, August 17, 2012.

First, a tip of the hat to the big, surprising, mega-marijuana...

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One of the big surprises in marijuana history has to be the moment that the majority of Americans said, What the heck, make it legal.
Gallup has been polling the marijuana legalization question for 40 years but found majority support for the first time in 2011, with 50 percent of voters in favor and just 46 percent opposed. Rasmussen reports that 56 percent support legalization.

One of the big surprises in marijuana history has to be the moment...

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Clearly that momentum was one of the forces that lifted both Initiative 502 here and Amendment 64 in Colorado onto the winner's podium in the 2012 elections.
Pictured is Alison Holcomb, Campaign Director for New Approach Washington and lead architect of I-502

Clearly that momentum was one of the forces that lifted both...

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In 1992, then Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who was also the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a television interview:
''When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and didn't like it. I didn't inhale and I didn't try it again.''
That statement - ''I didn't inhale'' - is another surprising moment, mostly because it was laughably unbelievable. But, no one really cared one way or another and that should have been a sign to politicians then that attitudes toward pot were changing.

Photo: RacingOne, ISC Archives Via Getty Images

In 1992, then Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who was also the...

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President Obama didn't go in for that particular BS. Partly because he had already written about it, and so admitted it in 2006: ''When I was a kid, I inhaled. That was the point.''
The photo is of Obama in 1990 in the office of The Harvard Law Review after being named President of The Harvard Law Review.

Photo: Boston Globe, Boston Globe Via Getty Images

President Obama didn't go in for that particular BS. Partly because...

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President Obama's past and his apparent desire to leave marijuana users alone led many to be surprised when federal agents began cracking down hard on medical marijuana growers and dispensaries. The feds said the arrested were doing more with their pot and money than serving medical patients.
Photo: U.S. marshals stand at the entrance of Oaksterdam University in Oakland, Calif., in 2012. The federal agents raided the medical marijuana training school at the heart of California's pot legalization movement.
Obama tried to clarify the issue in an interview with the Rolling Stone in April: ''The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we're telling them, ‘This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.’ That's not something we're going to do.''

President Obama's past and his apparent desire to leave marijuana...

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There are lots and lots of movies about marijuana and with marijuana moments. We've just picked a few that occurred in movies NOT about marijuana and scattered them throughout this gallery. After all, our cultural understanding and attitudes about marijuana must be influenced by our mass-culture representations of it.
One early movie with an overt marijuana moment was ''Easy Rider.''
Pictured is Dennis Hopper (Billy), Peter Fonda (Wyatt), wearing a stars-and-stripes helmet, with Jack Nicholson (George Hanson) wearing a gold football helmet, on the back of Fonda's motorcycle.
Wyatt and Billy introduce George to marijuana. George is an alcoholic but still has reservations about marijuana (''It leads to harder stuff,'' and ''I don't want to get hooked''), but he went for it anyway.

Photo: Silver Screen Collection, Getty Images

There are lots and lots of movies about marijuana and with...

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A semi-surprising marijuana moment was when Bill Murray gets Chevy Chase to give it a try in ''Caddyshack" in 1980.

A semi-surprising marijuana moment was when Bill Murray gets Chevy...

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That beat poet Allen Ginsberg was into marijuana surprised no one, but that he was able to pull off several pro-pot rallies - out in the open! - surprised and alarmed some citizens.
One of those pro-marijuana marches took place outside the Women's House of Detention on Sixth Avenue in lower Manhattan on Jan. 10, 1965.

Photo: Andrew Maclear, Redferns

That beat poet Allen Ginsberg was into marijuana surprised no one,...

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Here's a poster with an audacious Ginsberg quote: ''The actual experience of the smoked herb has been clouded by a fog of unrespectability by the unthinking, unknowledgable few who have not smoked themselves and yet insist upon setting themselves up as centres of propaganda about the said experience.''

Photo: Sydney O'Meara, Getty Images

Here's a poster with an audacious Ginsberg quote: ''The actual...

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A surprising marijuana court win:
Robert Randall, called by some ''the Rosa Parks of the medical-marijuana movement,'' made legal and medical history in 1976 when he successfully sued the U.S government for access to cannabis, the only remedy that controlled his glaucoma.
The Huffington Post story (13 Key Moments In Marijuana History) reported: ''This landmark verdict compelled the Food and Drug Administration to establish a 'Compassionate IND [Investigational New Drug] Program,' which continues to distribute government-grown marijuana to a handful of medical necessity patients - while U.S. officials allege that cannabis lacks therapeutic value.''
Here's Randall at home smoking prescription marijuana to counter effects of glaucoma.

Photo: Terry Ashe, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

A surprising marijuana court win:
Robert Randall, called by some...

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Another watershed marijuana moment was the passage of Proposition 215 in California.
That ''great leap forward'' came in 1996, when voters shocked the political and medical establishments by passing the proposition authorizing doctors to approve marijuana use by patients and not just for a shortlist of specified diseases, but also for "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.
Pictured: A woman receives marijuana from the Cannabis Buyers Club on Dec. 26, 1996 in Los Angeles.

Photo: Gilles Mingasson, Getty Images

Another watershed marijuana moment was the passage of Proposition...

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There have been many political and religious conservatives who have surprised us with their stance on marijuana.
Most recently, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), shown above, said this past Sunday: “Look, the last two presidents (Obama and George Bush) could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use ... Look what would have happened. It would have ruined their lives. They got lucky. But a lot of poor kids, particularly in the inner city, don’t get lucky. They don’t have good attorneys. They go to jail for these things. And I think it’s a big mistake.”

Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick, Getty Images

There have been many political and religious conservatives who have...

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Barry Goldwater, called ''Mr. Conservative'' during his life and credited with sparking the resurgence of the conservative political movement in the 1960s, endorsed Arizona’s first effort at legalizing medical marijuana in 1996.
Side note: Voters approved the 1996 medical marijuana law and did it again in 1998, but the laws were never enacted due to some technicality or other. Then in 2002, voters rejected a sweeping initiative that would have decriminalized possession of up to 2 ounces of marijuana for any user and required state police to hand out the drug to seriously ill people.

Photo: John Dominis, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Barry Goldwater, called ''Mr. Conservative'' during his life and...

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Brief movie intermission (go ahead and grab some popcorn ...):
In ''American Beauty,'' Kevin Spacey's character is miserable and depressed and all closed up inside until he starts smoking marijuana and working out. He becomes happy and independent minded. He gets shot in the head in the end, but not because of the pot.
That seemed surprising. In a movie not specifically about stoners or pot-positive culture, the fairly positive message about marijuana was unique.

Photo: Getty Images

Brief movie intermission (go ahead and grab some popcorn ...):...

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The two bookends here, Wes Bentley and Mena Suvari, were the tempters - one with marijuana and the other with .... well, you remember the movie. That's Thora Birch in the center. We disapprove of her decision to run off and live with a dealer! She was just a minor, after all.

Photo: Getty Images

The two bookends here, Wes Bentley and Mena Suvari, were the...

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Back to politics:
Conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck, shown here near the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City in 2011, said - ''I think it's about time we legalize marijuana. ... We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars or we legalize it, but this little game we are playing in the middle is not helping us.''
Beck was one of many conservatives in recent years to support legalization in a backhanded, sidedoor sort of way. Others were Rick Perry, Bill O’Reilly and Tea Party funder David Koch.

Photo: Uriel Sinai, Getty Images

Back to politics:
Conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck, shown...

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The Rev. Pat Robertson is slightly different than the previously mentioned conservatives for coming straight out against the war on drugs.
The New York Times reported him saying in March 2012:
''I just think it's shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of a controlled substance'' Robertson said on his show March 1. ''The whole thing is crazy. We've said, 'Well, we're conservatives, we're tough on crime.' That's baloney.
''I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,'' Robertson told the Times. ''If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?''
He's shown here talking with his son Tim during a tribute slide show prior to the funeral of Rev. Jerry Falwell at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in 2007 in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Photo: Pool, Getty Images

The Rev. Pat Robertson is slightly different than the previously...

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Movie break:
In ''Poltergeist,'' Craig Nelson and JoBeth Williams talk about their proposed three-meter-high diving board during a marijuana moment apparently designed to show them as open minded, albeit conservative (note the cover of the book), money-grubbing suburbanites.

Movie break:
In ''Poltergeist,'' Craig Nelson and JoBeth...

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... they laugh and laugh and mime jumping off the board and no trouble comes from the marijuana. The only trouble they have are the dead people buried under the house.

... they laugh and laugh and mime jumping off the board and no...

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In the realm of science:
Raphael Mechoulam and his colleague Yechiel Gaoni at the Weizmann Institute of Science created a momentous marijuana moment in the 1960s when they isolated, analyzed and synthesized the main psychoactive ingredient in the cannabis plant, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Later, Professor Mechoulam deciphered the cannabinoids native to the brain.

In the realm of science:
Raphael Mechoulam and his colleague...

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Patent #6,630,507
Despite one arm of the federal government saying marijuana has no medicinal value and should remain illegal, another arm of said government awarded the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services a patent titled "Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants" in October 2003.

Patent #6,630,507
Despite one arm of the federal government...

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On to the local advocates of legalizing marijuana - many of whom are surprising backers since they are on the side of prosecution and law enforcement.
But first up is Seattle travel guru Rick Steves. Locally we weren’t too surprised that he put his name, company and reputation on the line to back marijuana legalization, but nationally people were sort of struck by it. In one interview last year, the Huffington Post was pretty curious about why a travel writer and successful businessman would stick his neck out for pot.
Steves said: ''I got involved because I am a rare celebrity that's got the balls to speak out on this truth issue. A lot of people are just afraid that it's going affect their business and so I just think, I'm lucky, I don't need to be elected. I can't be fired.''

On to the local advocates of legalizing marijuana - many of whom...

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Pete Holmes, currently employed as the attorney for the city of Seattle and charged with the duty of prosecuting lawbreakers ... was one of I-502's sponsors. That was after he had already made it clear that he would follow the will of Seattle voters and not prosecute any misdemeanor marijuana possession cases
“With regulation of production and sales and aggressive prosecution of marijuana DUIs, we can focus our limited resources on fighting marijuana-related problems where they have direct negative impacts on our communities and not on throwing people in jail for using a substance that isn't more dangerous than alcohol,” he said on the I-502 campaign page.

Pete Holmes, currently employed as the attorney for the city of...

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Quick movie break:
We all knew that some soldiers in the Vietnam War used marijuana ... but Oliver Stone's ''Platoon'' pushed his positive notions about marijuana into the foreground of his movie about the terrors of that war.

Quick movie break:
We all knew that some soldiers in the...

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Live round.

Live round.

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Another surprising backer of legalizing marijuana in Washington has to be former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington John Mckay.
Appointed by former conservative president George Bush, McKay became a sponsor of I-502, ''because marijuana prohibition has failed and Congress and the legislature must act to eliminate the danger to public safety posed by the enormous American black market. Unless states act to regulate, control and decriminalize most uses of marijuana, Congress will continue to ignore the law enforcement danger and assert federal criminal laws that ill serve the public,'' he said on the I-502 campaign site.

Photo: Ron Wurzer, Getty Images

Another surprising backer of legalizing marijuana in Washington has...

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Bizarre movie marijuana moment: In ''Transformers 2,'' this mother gets out of control because of a pot brownie.

Bizarre movie marijuana moment: In ''Transformers 2,'' this mother...

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There are more backers of legal marijuana that are surprising given their background, it seems to us, but we'll end with former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper.
Stamper was responsible for Seattle's response to the protests of the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which blew up in just about every bad way it could have (though thankfully no one died) and that eventually led to his resignation.
From there, Stamper wrote a book called ''Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing.''
And, he not only backed I-502 but is also an advisory board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

There are more backers of legal marijuana that are surprising given...

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We close out with a very surprisingly busy poster announcing the 1967 rally for cannabis in Hyde Park, London.

Vanishing salmon and fields trashed by trespassers are the most common agricultural side effects of marijuana growth in California, experts there say. The idea agriculture commissioner candidate Kinky Friedman promotes of a hemp farming utopia brought on by the legalization of marijuana in Texas, they say, might be more pipe dream than reality.

"It is the green thread that weaves its way through all of our lives," Friedman said of marijuana during an interview with The Texas Tribune's Evan Smith. "This is not about long-haired hippies smokin' dope. It is about the future of Texas."

Friedman, a humorist and writer who counts famous pot smoker Willie Nelson among his close friends, has said that legalizing the plant for growth in Texas would bring wealth to farmers who could grow marijuana for medicinal and recreational uses and its sister product, hemp, for fiber, oils and food. Currently, it is illegal to grow and possess marijuana in Texas and most other states, and while hemp is legal for consumption, Texas and most other states do not allow farmers to grow it.

Experts with experience in the legal pot industry in other states, though, say a host of regulatory and environmental factors could complicate any potential benefits growing marijuana might have in Texas.

States that have recently legalized marijuana growing, including Colorado and Washington, have just gotten started, so they are difficult test cases to assess. But in California, where medicinal marijuana cultivation has been legal since 1996 and is plentiful, many farmers say the crop hasn't been as good for agriculture as Friedman has suggested.

Much of the problems farmers and scientists in California report stem from the fact that under federal law, the plant remains illegal, so states cannot legally regulate its growth as they do other crops.

"Without prohibition, you wouldn't have this problem," said Tony Silvaggio, an environmental sociologist at Humboldt State University in California, who has researched the effects of marijuana farming in California.

Water use for marijuana growth is one of the most important aspects that state law cannot regulate today. Growers of the water-intensive plant in California are siphoning precious supplies in a time of drought. California wildlife officials and fishermen have said that endangered salmon are dying off because marijuana farms are sucking the rivers dry.

The biggest effect the marijuana industry has had on farmers there, said Devon Jones, executive director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau office, is an increase in trespassing cases. The lure of cash has prompted some who don't own farmland to secretly grow marijuana on others' private property. That means the plant is also taking water used on that land to grow other crops.

"Marijuana is being grown on their property without their knowledge. ... The trash and some of the chemicals that are left behind are the liabilities that they have to deal with," Jones said.

Additionally, because growing marijuana is still illegal under federal law, agricultural advisory offices are not allowed to give marijuana farmers advice about how to best grow the crop and what pesticides they should use. Silvaggio said many growers use fungicides approved only for ornamental plants that have never been tested for later human consumption. If marijuana were completely legal, growers could be educated about using safer pesticides.

If Texas were to join other states in legalizing marijuana, Silvaggio said, the federal government may be more likely to follow suit. That would allow states to regulate its growth. But since marijuana is illegal, it's impossible to know precisely what legalization would mean for Texas farmers.

"We don't know anything empirical about what happens when serious professional farmers are allowed to do this," said Jonathan Caulkins, who has studied the economics of marijuana growth at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College in Pittsburgh. But he suspects the price of marijuana would fall if it was mass produced, which could reduce its demand in the black market and reduce crime.

That doesn't mean Texas farmers would benefit, though. Marijuana plants are difficult to harvest because the buds must be individually snipped from each plant. That work is labor intensive, and most farm workers today don't have those skills.

The market for marijuana producers is also unlikely to get very big, Caulkins said, because it's a high-yield crop. Only about 10,000 acres nationwide would be needed to satisfy the country's demand, he said. If farmers grow more marijuana, they could oversaturate the market and drive down prices.

Hemp, on the other hand — which comes from the same plant as marijuana but has less THC, the chemical that produces a high — is easier to harvest, and demand in the U.S. is rising. Friedman has suggested that the first step to marijuana legalization is to allow Texans to grow hemp, which is used in a variety of products, from clothing and twine to edible seeds, protein powder and cosmetics such as moisturizers and essential oils.

Hemp has long been legal in Canada, but only a few hundred growers have licenses to produce there, Caulkins said. That doesn't bode well for predictions of a hemp revolution in Texas that Friedman argues would occur if the state legalized growing it. A Congressional Research Service report on hemp last year came to a similar conclusion, noting that hemp crops can also cross-pollinate with marijuana crops. That means farmers growing hemp could suddenly find that their product has enough THC content to make people high, putting them in the crosshairs with the law — or that marijuana growers' products would lose their potency.

Even if hemp and marijuana growth become possibilities for Texas farmers, it's not clear that it would be a moneymaking enterprise. Those who profit most from agricultural production are typically at the end of the supply chain, like grocery stores or bakers, Caulkins said — not farmers.

"The people who are going to make money are going to be the bakeries that buy [it] ... and put it into brownies," he said.

Still, Friedman has insisted, that translates into revenue Texas could use to pay for taxpayers' priorities. "All of the candidates are talking about education," he said. "I'm the only one saying how we can fund it."